Steve Hoffman, CEO of Founders Space, talks about using networks to connect founders and spark breakthrough ideas. He's a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who runs one of the leading incubators.
So Steve has spoken at our classes before. And actually, we planned this a few months ago, and I'm glad that he came by. He's the CEO and founder of Founderspace, one of the leading incubators around the world. He's a serial entrepreneur, angel investor. And I was reading through one of his descriptions, and he said that he's one of the best people to actually connect founders to other founders or to potential co-founders.
Yeah.
And this is a question that was asked of me by our students a few days ago, like, hey, I'm struggling with finding the right people. So this is the perfect guy to actually reach out to, so I'm glad we have him here. So please give it up for Steve Hoffman. Thank you. Big green button.
We're getting going. Good to have you all here. I see some familiar faces and some new faces. It's great to be here. So I— my name is Steve Hoffman, but in Silicon Valley, a lot of people call me Captain Hoff because I am the captain of Founders Space. We started 6 years ago. And before that, I was like many of you. I was a startup founder. So I did 3 different venture-funded startups. and 2 non-venture-funded startups. And I have a lot of experience about what it's like to be an entrepreneur. So some of my startups did really well. Some of them had a lot of problems. So if you have problems, I know what they are. I can empathize. And I've also been through it with my own companies. And I've been through it with hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world. that we teach. Now I'm really happy to be here today at Draper. Our offices are in San Francisco, but we love to partner with other groups, and Draper University is great. All the different startups here, everything that Tim Draper is doing is very innovative. He's one of the— Tim Draper, I've known him for a long time, and he is just— he thinks He's like nobody else. I mean, he tries stuff that other people don't even think about. And that's one of the reasons he's been so successful. Now, now I heard one of Tim Draper's latest things is he's trying to split California up into multiple states. Crazy idea. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's definitely Tim Draper. So I'm happy to be here today. So I'll tell you a little about Founders Space very briefly, and then I'm going to dive into our main subject. And the topic today is called Neo-Sapiens. And by Neo-Sapiens, what I mean is the new human beings, the new Homo sapiens. So as we know, technology's already changing our lives. We're already getting pacemakers in the heart is the very beginning. But soon, our bodies and our minds will be more and more connected to the internet. And I'm going to talk today about how we and our brains will end up truly connecting directly to the internet, and what that will mean for humanity. So— oh, before I go further, one of our partners is AI Angel. You see them below us. And they are really cool. So you should go there because as a startup founder, they have a whole database of venture capitalists and they can actually connect you with them. So it's free. You just go on there, you check it out, and then they also do the reverse thing is they will connect venture capitalists once you sign up with you. So it's a really good resource for entrepreneurs. We actually use it. to help screen our entrepreneurs that we let into our program, to help find good matches. Founders Space, we've been around a while, and we have really focused on education. So if you don't know me, I'm a very passionate guy. I love what I do. I love doing startups, and I just can't stop. I love working with entrepreneurs. And what I found is that the most important thing I can give entrepreneurs is not the money. I mean, the money helps. We invest in a lot of companies. But entrepreneurs have problems they need solved. And educating yourself and providing education, we do it all around the world. And Forbes magazine ranked us the number 1 accelerator for overseas startups. And Inc. magazine put us in the top 10 of incubators. And Entrepreneur also ranked us number 1. And it's primarily because of how we teach and what we teach. I spend a lot of time traveling. So I'm in Silicon Valley now, but last year I was on the road 70% of the time. So we— I was just always on a plane. This year I'm trying to stay home more because it's grueling. But we have over 50 partners in 22 countries. So we work, as you can see, all across Europe and all across Asia. I know Crystal's from China. We do a lot in China. So we have a very big presence. We're in Beijing. We've been in Shanghai for a couple years, Wuhan. We're about to open in Chengdu and Xi'an and Hangzhou. So I'm always going back and forth with China. I also work with a lot of global companies. I work with Bosch of Germany. helping them innovate. We're working with Huawei in China. It's very exciting, because when I work with the big companies, I can often partner them with startups who have really cool technology and need the distribution, the support, the money, things like that. So let's kick it off. Oh, before I do, I'll tell you, I'm the author of this book, Make Elephants Fly. And basically, it's about— I've been in the startup business forever. Doing my own startups, and then for the past 6 years working with entrepreneurs, running Founders Space. And the book is basically all that knowledge. I put all the knowledge of basically how startups come up with breakthrough ideas and how they take their products and launch them. So that's the book. It's won the Axiom Award for best book for entrepreneurs. It's a bestseller also in China and many other countries.
